


Your Moving and Storage Resource

by longwhitecoats



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: Cats in spaaaaaaace!, F/F, Gen, Space Adventure, curtainfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21830821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longwhitecoats/pseuds/longwhitecoats
Summary: Goose is curious about Boxes.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau
Comments: 16
Kudos: 80
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Your Moving and Storage Resource

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katherine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/gifts).

Boxes. There are armies of them. I have studied the ways of cat-kind long enough to know that I should exhibit displeasure at this. A true cat would no doubt hide, or hiss at its humans. But as a flerken, I do not know a cat’s natural fear; and as the former companion of the late Mar-vell, I am familiar with the ways of Boxes. Sometimes they have interesting contents that sparkled, or smell attractive, or activate a thunderous rumbling in one of my inner dimensions which used to make Mar-vell smile. I am curious about Boxes.

My new humans, it seems, are not.

“Carol, I put the hammer _right here_. Did you vaporize it? Where is it?”

“Uhh, I think it’s with the stuff we were assembling in the kitchen. When I was fixing that cabinet?”

“I swear, you think just because you’re cute—”

The big humans smell of sweat, sawdust, and frustration. The small human is away at something called Space Camp; apparently it is on Earth, which seems to me to defeat the point, but human ways are often oxymoronic. I slither between some of the Boxes. One of them is pulsating.

“_—don’t_ think that kissing me is going to make up for losing my hammer.”

“I got other moves.”

“Hmm.”

The humans are busy grooming one another, but I’m perfectly capable as a solo investigator. I once completed the Kibble Run in under 15 Paw-secs. The Boxes don’t intimidate me.

Much.

The pulsating, glowing box is also warm. It smells like the memory of breakfast. My whiskers twitch away from it instinctively as I approach, but I refuse to be intimidated. I will defend my humans and our new home together. I stretch up one paw and bat gently at the pulsing wall of the box, which responds with a horrific squelching noise, like a Poppupian undergoing mitosis.

“Did you hear something--?”

“I _know_ you’re not trying to get out of unpacking the rest of this house.”

“No, I’m serious, like a humming noise. Is that box—_glowing?_”

“Carol, don’t touch—”

The resulting explosion, or perhaps implosion, sends both me and Carol spinning down a colonnade of burned-out stars. Carol screams for Maria and then for me. I, being sensible, pass out.

*

When I come to, Carol is cuddling me protectively in her arms and praising me for my current state of consciousness. I decide to allow this.

We are spinning in space. Crystalline star systems float past us at a vast distance; over Carol’s shoulder, I can see a pod of Acanti swim by, each fin-stroke powerful enough to traverse galaxies at light speed if they wish. I had forgotten how beautiful this is.

Carol seems transfixed by it too. I must remind myself that she is young yet; for all her power, she was barely a kitten when the Kree took her, and is only now settling into her place in the universe.  
  
“There’s a lot of world in the world, huh, Goose,” she says. I purr. “I wonder what part of it this is.”

Without waiting for an answer, she jets out into the void, and I am content to be carried along.

*

It takes some time to find a habitable-looking planet. After hours of gliding past icy moons and storm-tossed gas giants, Carol lands on a mountainous planet dotted sparsely with violet pools of liquid and releases me from her arms.

Nothing greets her or challenges her. She stands on the peak of a range made entirely of a single prismatic black gemstone, brushing her hands lightly over the lavender fronds and pale green lichens that grow on its outer slope. She waits perhaps ten minutes. Then she picks me up again, and we move on.

*

Several Earth days must have passed by the time we reach the next planet. Carol does not feel hunger or exhaustion as most humans do, but even she looks weary, and when we reach a planet covered in soft blue sand, she collapses into it and immediately falls asleep. Understanding that this means she has appointed me to the serious position of night guard, I tuck my tail neatly around my feet and keep watch.

A few moons rise and set while she sleeps; something large and crab-like scuttles at a distance but does not approach. The name of _flerken_ is whispered with fear even on the most remote worlds. I note to my satisfaction that my reputation precedes me even here.

When light comes in shades of orange, I use the camouflage to my advantage and hunt for food to sustain my human. My immense prowess serves me well, and I am able to lay no less than five small mammaloid creatures at Carol’s feet before she stirs. I can tell she is proud and grateful by the expression she makes and the way she pats my head. I am an excellent caretaker.

After we have dined, Carol once again launches us into space. Her face is entirely, carefully blank now. I know this means she is scared.

*

By the ninth planet, we have a routine. Carol collapses; I search for food; she rises and we carry on, seeking a way home. But on this particular planet, a gas-clouded rock barely sizable enough to be worthy of the name, Carol does not rise.

I nudge her with my paw. I meow.

She looks at me with watery eyes. Perhaps the gas irritates them.

“I’m sorry, Goose,” she says. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how I got us here or where we are. I don’t know where home is.” She reaches out a hand, and I meet it with my forehead, anxious to assure her that I trust her leadership. She is a fine captain.

But despite my most solicitous attentions, she is not comforted. She simply brushes away the leggy remnants of our insectoid meal and begins to cry.

“I don’t know why I couldn’t do this one thing,” she says. “It’s like, every time I claw my way back to Maria, something drags me away. I just wanted to be happy with her. I just wanted—”

“You just wanted a home,” I say.

She looks up, her face caught somewhere between surprise and resentment. “You’ve been able to talk this whole time?”

“I’m not really talking,” I say, grooming myself a little. “Some places in the universe just make it easier for you to hear me.”

“I have no fucking idea what that means,” Carol says.

“Don’t worry about it too much,” I say. “It probably won’t happen again.”

She stares at me for a long moment.

“So what’s with that thing where you run all over the house at midnight?” she asks.

*

The tenth planet has a city.

“Space is weird,” Carol says as we land in a civic plaza with large signs reading _No Intergalactic Landings In This Area_ in Mentelleron, Baluurian, and Lion. “Is that dude a lion?”

“Let’s just get through the crowds,” I say. “There must be a multi-universe self-hauler franchise here. Most major cities have one.” I jump down from Carol’s arms and begin weaving through the crowds. Most humans call to me to wait when I do this; Carol being Carol, she simply jets overhead. I suspect it’s against city ordinances, but it amuses me too much to chide her for it.

The streets are lively, with brightly lit shop windows and well-dressed passers-by crowded around them, buying things with a jaunty ringing of Credit Bells. Perhaps this is a Corporation planet; depressing, but useful for our needs.

Sure enough, it takes barely half an hour before we arrive at our destination, a place as bright an orange as my own fur.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Carol says as she lands, slightly out of breath.

The sign in front of us advertises the Right Equipment! At the Lowest Cost! Guaranteed! in a flickering old Translationator sign that registers our species and begins cycling through human and flerken languages. Above it is the single cup-shaped glyph that serves as their universal logo, followed by various franchise names: Universal Self Freight & Haul (in Glx); U Flark It! (from the rather controversial flark branch); and after a long list of other names, written in human English, the plain black letters that say U HAUL.

“They’re very reliable,” I say politely.

Carol barges into the office with her customary grace and accosts the Lion-Person behind the counter, demanding a transit back to Earth.

“Hold your Kymellians,” the U-Haul employee says haplessly, tugging at their mane, which I note is looking a bit sparse. “The form for that’s in the back room. I’ll just go grab that and we can get started.”

Carol, whose fists are glowing, is flabbergasted by the absolute lack of intimidation she’s produced. She looks down at me as the Lion-Person disappears into the back. There’s a lot of rustling.

“This is not going to work,” she whispers angrily. “Also—_Universal_ Haul? Really?”

“What did you think the ‘U’ stood for?” I say as the Lion-Person returns with a stack of paper several inches thick.

“If you could just start with these,” the Lion-Person says, sliding the stack over to me. “Flerkens require a lot of paperwork.”

*

Once we finish the paperwork, I expect Carol to want to explore and find food, but she’s determined to get home right away. She strides out to the docking lot with a grim expression usually reserved for battle. I suppose we can come back someday.

The little transport pod is barely big enough for us both to fit; we squeeze inside and Carol takes a full minute to slam the lid shut since, banged up as it is, the seal doesn’t quite fit the frame. But eventually it clicks home, the dials rattle to life, and Carol plugs in the coordinates found on the triplicate copy of our _Destination Fare Calculator_ sheet.

The bottom of the pod begins to hum.

“If this works, we won’t be able to talk again,” Carol says.

The hum has become a loud roar.

“That’s true,” I say, feeling a bit like I’m yelling. The roar of the pod is now accompanied by shaking.

“You’re a good flerken,” Carol yells back. “But you’re also—”

“What?” I say. My vision is blurring, we’re rattling so fast.

“You’re also—”

“I can’t hear—”

“—a good cat,” Carol shouts over the roar of the machine, and I want to tell her something too but I don’t know if she’ll hear me—

“YOU ARE A GOOD HUMAN,” I scream into a sudden deafening silence as the machine launches.

I don’t know if she hears me or not.

The stars collapse into a point.  
  
*

When I wake this time, Maria and Carol are holding hands and laughing. For a moment, I think we’ve been transported into the distant past, they look so giddy and joyful; but then I see that they’re sitting on a half-built window seat, and the Boxes still command the floor. In fact, in almost exactly the same places. And Maria is wearing the same clothes.

“We came back to the exact same time,” Carol is saying. “Like magic. I’m telling you, they’re a really good company.”  
  
“No way. I know you’re just messing with me. They do not have _U-Haul_ in outer space.”

“First of all, it was inner space, and second of all, they do so.”

“Do not.”

“Do so.”

If we were in the void, I could interrupt this scintillating conversation with a full account of the multi-universal self-hauling company’s franchise expansion; but we are on Earth again, and so my communications with Carol are once again limited. Still, she keeps glancing at me. I think she sees me differently now.

“So what _was_ that?” Maria says. “Did you accidentally pack some Avengers artifact or something?”

“Oh,” Carol says. She’s grinning at me. I had wondered if she figured it out; I only remembered myself at the moment we were pulled into the void by the reaction with Carol’s energy. “It’s a flerken pocket dimension. That’s how Goose keeps all those tentacles inside.” She waggles her eyebrows at me. “Most of the time they stay in Goose’s stomach, but I guess this one, uh, came out.”

Maria’s expression as enlightenment dawns is one of unparalleled disgust. “Are you telling me that you got lost in intergalactic _cat puke?_”

“Flerken puke, technically,” Carol says. “But yes.” And she winks at me.

She is good at being a human, I think. Almost as good as I am at being a cat, though I’m not a cat, and she might not be a human anymore.

The important thing is that we try.

“Well, that’s the grossest space thing I’ve ever heard,” Maria says. “If I hadn’t watched you disappear, I’d swear you made this all up. Especially the part about the U-Haul.”

Carol grins. “You know what they say about lesbians,” she says, leaning in for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for such a fun prompt! I loved writing from Goose's POV and giving Carol & Maria a happy ending together. <3 Happy Yuletide!
> 
> ETA: Thanks so much to my wonderful beta readers, [kutsushita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kutsushita) & [marginaliana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana).


End file.
